10 posts from May 2008

work is slow, it always is, since i have moved to evenings. watch the pot, try to make it boil with the powers of imagination, the heat was turned off hours ago.

Workman's hammer pound, the sounds of cars in the street, the open door of the patio, the fan, the heat, the birds. It all seems red, green, white, these morning prayers sent on the wind. Sounds, vibrations that caress the ear, sinking deep in to the body. Open, laying still, the breath pulls in deep and releases the night's memories. You're always there playing in the dreams, in the landscapes. You never stay long.

pictograms on the wall
the story caught in mid-stroke
finished without starting
recall the notes,
melody contrived,
words forced
these arts are memories of when
the world seemed small,
concentrate on the distance, the space
the only thing real

He sat motionless in his cage and they all resented him. They resented his silence, they way he did not move. The stillness provoked disquiet in them. He was an artist, and this was his art. He would eventually disappear but after a long still silent pause.  The wait was the process. The product was when all have moved on and his slight body was swept up and discarded with the hay that lined his cage.

What angered most was that on the surface there appeared to be nothing happening. Those that paid the cost admission would not feel that they had received their moneys worth until they had seen the hawk-boy, or the bearded iguana. His act, his art was too much out-mode for the main attraction. His cage was off to the to the far side in the place designated for the smaller attractions. The less interesting attractions, those that were still under contract, but raised less interest. The art was no longer respected, and the artist was the butt of ridicule, and jokes. And he longed to disappear, but an artist cannot rush his art. And surely he would soon be gone.

His activity had always been with purpose. He spent a year as a walking artist. Seen on the sides of hi-ways walking. Hours in the day with left foot in front of the right, the left to follow the right. His art spread from town to town, the motorways were the canvass. He walked from miles, and in the days he found pain in his feet and legs. His art began to take shape. It was that of loneliness, of solitude. But the activity stole away for the structure of the piece. Each step moved him from the last, and the statement was lost in the miles. It was in the hypnotic steps that he realized that the truest expression was that of non-movement.
 
He purchased a cage, and in the vein of the older artists he set about creating this new masterpiece.  He found a traveling road show in his wanderings and approached the owner to explain the work he had in mind. A freak show was not the gallery that he wanted to present the new masterpiece but the deal was struck. The artist funded the exhibition. He had the cage, and lined it with hay; he sat there. It was all that needed to be done. And now in his closed cell he saw the world. As the show traveled from place to place, from town to city and to farmers field he watched the parade of people move past the view thru the bars.  At first the desire to move or to explain the process was unbearable. But he let his emaciated body his watered eyes and pale skin tell the story; this incomplete story that would ultimately finish with a seemingly empty cage.

The parade of observers showed little interest for the thin man in the cage. This man not moving, not speaking sitting there alone, no spark in his eyes, no oddities about him at all. Out side of his oversized clothes and rail thin body there was nothing special to note, just a thin man in a cage. And the sign outside stated clearly that the show would amaze, intoxicate and fill with awe and fear. This man in a cage was not any of these things he was just sitting.  An obvious miss laid crate. The man must have been food for the Amazing Egress. That lay just beyond the far door.

Soon all the customers had gone to see the egress and the great tent of mysterious wonders was empty of them. The hired hands had begun to pull down the tent and pack away the boxes and the exhibitions. The two headed frog, the half beast woman, the freakishly small elephant all went to their trailers and boxes.  Every thing was packed away and the trailers had begun to move off to the next town every thing that is except for the artist. His small cage was left behind. Perhaps because he couldn’t call out and remind them that he was being left behind, or perhaps the owner had enough of the small box that drew no attention and was looked on as more of pain to move then it was worth. Whatever the case was the artist found himself alone in his box in the night air of the countryside. And he would have stayed there like that for all time if I had not accidentally found him.  When I found him, I knew nothing about him but later he was to tell me this story and more.

I was driving. I had been driving since May. I stopped for a moment to stretch my legs. I saw a large open field, and pulled in along the side of the road. I had lost my wife to an acquaintance, a man that I had met once before the night of December 23 at an impromptu Christmas party. I had stopped in after work for a drink to celebrate the holidays. I had some drinks with my coworkers, and my wife at the time arrived with a coworker from her office and a man named Rupert. I had had a few drinks but need more to take time to prepare the holidays and I excused myself early. She didn’t come home that night, and she was gone completely by the 13th of January.

Perhaps it was the grief, perhaps it was relief, or mixture of the two, but my loss caused me to question the course and meaning of my life. Work began to suffer, and I was let go by April. I sold our house, and after the lawyers and realtors I had a small sum, and partnered with that and my severance pay I pondered the next course of action.  I decided to take a drive. And now 6 weeks later I was still driving.  I imagined myself to be a bit like the Harry Dean Stanton character in Paris, Texas. However I think that romantic ideal was lost in the truck stops and cups of coffee, the sleeping in roadside pullouts and the hygiene up keep in the washrooms of gas stations.

I had been driving most of that day. And decided to stop as the sun was going down on the side of the road to urinate, and take a small walk. That is when I found the small cage that contained the man.  A strange find. A small man in a box. I was not sure at first what to do with him. I managed the Create like cage in to the trunk of my car. And I drove to the nearest town. The police and the hospitals directed me to take the monkey to a vet. I protested that I was sure it was not a monkey, but a man. They laughed at me. This “man was so small and didn’t actually speak. It must be a monkey, they contended.

And so there we were, me and the man in a box, neither of us with a place to go, and no reason to stay. I couldn’t leave him there, and he seemed to like when people were looking at him, discussing him. Not outwardly, but in the deep part of the eyes, they shined a bit. So I lashed his cage down in the open trunk of my car and off we drove.
 

the twist downward, the spiral of protein that marks the path of us all, from the beasts that we evolved from, to the beasts we evolved into. follow the twist back up, map it, remember, relive, feel it....
the reptile gnaws the skin, devouring up the thru mammalian face.
the monsters are around us.
the monsters are in us.

 

frozen strawberries, juice concentrate, fresh pineapple, crushed ice... quart of rum...
its a fine punch... stop now, drinking from that glass, considering the selfishness of being alive.

Today, this rain, these streets slicked, these people huddled under eaves, walking... rain on the face, spotting the glasses. This walk, this soft wind, this day, trapped in the amber of memory. Hear the angels,  guiding the steps, holding the hand, this endless walk, this rainy day.